Food - 11 tips for a pleasant eating experience

I was reading an article today about how insane we are about food and it got me thinking. The article spoke as usual about the problems we have with food and how unrealistic it all is. I remembered back to when I was a kid and food was simpler. 'Eat your vegetables' was a regular call from my mother and ice cream was ice-cream. Ice blocks were made from lemonade straight from the freezer and fruit juice was made in a juicer from whole carrots and apples.

Now it's complicated. Meat pie is only 10% meat, ice creams have 15 different toppings, 30 different flavours and 25 ingredients. Ice blocks are not even available anymore and fruit juice has more ingredients than a curry. Why?

Why do we always overcomplicate things? Why do we constantly ignore the obvious and expect things to be available 365 days a year. Mangoes are a summer fruit, potatoes are a winter vegetable. That's how life goes. And while I'm asking about the absurdities of life why on earth do we eat our national symbol???

I decided to try and name my own personal tips about how we could eat healthier. Just for the record this isn't about fast food. This is about the fact that I don't want to die at the age of 45 because of a heart attack or diabeties.

1. Buy food with as few ingredients as possible. I am a fan of the spreadable butter from Western Star but when I read the packaging I found it had 12 ingredients. Butter should not be spreadable without being put in the sun. Regular butter has only 4 and should have only 1.
2. Don't drink too much soft drink. I personally limit myself to 1 1.25L bottle of soft drink per week. Eventually I'd like to get that down to 1 per fortnight. Instead of soft drink I drink tea or milk and being addicted to coffee I drink that often too. Drink water! (if you don't like plain water squeeze a little lemon in to it but you do get used to it).
3. Prepare proper meals. Those 'health' meals are useless. Utterly empty of nutrients, usually full of fat and sugar. Just look at the label. Powders, colours, flavours and half of them reduce the fat only to increase the sugar and salt. Anyone can boil some water and cook some carrots, peas, beans and potato, then fry some chicken or piece of steak. Takeaway should not happen every day or even every week. When I was a kid chips were eaten only on holidays or the odd weekend during a term.
4. Buy plates from antique stores. Plates today have been made bigger to accomodate our larger serving sizes. No longer is just a burger enough. We now have a burger, fries, dessert and a drink and some people don't even find that enough. We've gorged so much that we don't find a normal serving size big enough anymore. I use a plate we own which is smaller than our others and using that is plenty.
5. Don't eat food your great grandmother wouldn't recognise as food. This tip isn't mine. It's from a book called In Defence of Food: The Myth of Nutrition and the Pleasures of Eating by Michael Pallon. It's a great tip and it's included because it makes perfect sense. Your grandmother wouldn't have bought hollandaise sauce in a packet which has 10 ingredients or yoghurt in a tube. She'd have made it with 5 ingredients of her own and had it as a treat once a month. (proper hollandiase sauce is 10 times better than the packet kind).
6. Lower your expectations of how long food lasts and when it's available. Food should go off. 90% of the extras put in food is to make it last longer. Milk should go off, bread goes mouldy. It's a fact of life. I'll bet most people don't know that basmati rice can go purple when mouldy. I go out in the middle of the week (with time) and so I do two shops per week. This is so I can buy good, natural food and I buy half so that I don't waste it. Also food has seasons so instead of buying the really expensive imported magoes which are brought in from the opposite hemisphere try eating a winter fruit. Potatoes are crappy in summer so eat summer vegetables instead (this is also good to reduce your carbon footprint).
7. Make it yourself. 10 years ago I never would have thought I would be saying those words however I've realised that cooking can be fun. Even if you are a busy family there is no reason why you can't cook a meal together and then sit down and eat together. Let your kids help. Kids love to help if they can. Cooking as a family takes half an hour and gets the kids away from the TV. They learn about food early and have much more fun eating it if they've made it. With one family member doing one thing each you can get it all done within 45 minutes or less.
8. Stop eating when not hungry. Kids know how to stop. Adults don't. 'Oh I shouldn't waste it' is the most common excuse but there are dozens of others and we've all used them. Tired, stressed, you actually want flavour, someone else is still eating....they go on forever. Adults force themselves to finish and force their kids to finish. If you don't want it don't eat it. First step: Learn what hunger actually feels like and be aware of it. Second step, know when to stop. Weight watchers has a trick. Eat half your meal and then pause for 10 minutes before finishing it.
9. Savour your food. Taking time to eat sitting down, calmly, without a phone or 20 people talking to you or 10 papers to read is good. Sit. Eat. Be still and quiet. We eat so quickly these days at our desk or on the train or whilst driving to a meeting that a lot of the time we've finished the food before we've realised that it was too much. By eating slower you accomplish two things. First of all you get a chance for a time out. Something every person needs in a day. Secondly you'll often realise when you are 80% done that you've had enough. If you eat slower you won't eat the final 20% you don't really want anyway.
10. Be aware of what you eat. For years I've lived on the same things. Potato, cheese, nachos and chocolate. When I began finding out that there were forms of exercise I found interesting I began being much more aware of what I put in to my body. I was bigger and eating butter with almost everything, sugar with almost everything, cream with almost everything, chocolate on the way to the bus etc etc. Now that I'm more aware I've dropped weight without even trying. I sound like a freaky infomercial but it's true. Being aware of what I was eating and how often I was snacking made me change. Now I still go through up and down periods of too much chocolate or too much cheese but it doesn't last as long. I now try to make things myself. Like the difference between a homemade pie and a store bought one. Mine was satisfying to make, healthier, tastier, more filling in general, cheaper and had about 1/3 of the ingredients. I personally still have a long way to go but I totally believe in these things.
11. Final tip: Don't drink. Alcohol is a mild poison. I personally drink about 4 times a year. My birthday, my mum's birthday, christmas and one random one when sometimes I just want a single brandy. By the way by saying 'i drink 4 times a year' I don't mean that I go on a bender 4 times a year. I mean I have 2 drinks at the most and then stop and ALWAYS after food. I'd sooner drink battery acid than get drunk and it would be just as harmful. Alcohol is a poison used to disinfect. Guys sometimes pour beer on a BBQ to clean it. Would you drink regular BBQ cleaner? Believe me you can have a lot more fun sober than you can drunk and if you can't get up and talk to the opposite sex then maybe you should ask yourself way rather than getting drunk (or taking drugs) so you can chat to the hottie across the room.

Well there they are. My 11 tips of better food health and a final note about exercise. When I was in school I hated sport. It made me hot and sweaty and the gym was so boring I'd almost fall asleep. However 2 years ago I discovered ice skating and then dance. Exercise which didn't feel like exercise. It is fun, varied, challenging, different. I've never seen the point of going to a gym. Why would you climb on a step machine? You climb and you climb and you don't get anywhere. There is no accomplishment. So if you find you are like me in nodding off at the gym try lots of different forms of exercise. If you like the gym then fine but if you don't there here are some options:

Tennis, swimming, figure skating, ice hockey, any form of dance, bike riding, bush walking, lacrosse, hockey, netball, basketball, golf, water polo, volleyball, gymnastics, yoga, pilates, tai chi, stretch class...The posibilites are endless and don't let people tell you you are too old. If you enjoy it and it's fun and you are willing to work at it that's enough.

One last thing: be sensible, if you feel something isn't right with your body or your diet or exercise makes you feel strange or uncomfortable for goodness take talk to your doctor. These tips are just general, do what is right for you.